Ediblog.com
Raising
Pagan Children: Scary
©2006
Sharon Hughes
This
Halloween, what’s your choice for the scariest - out of control parents or
crazy dictators?
A
few week’s ago we watched as out-of-control heads of state came to
deliver their 'evils of America and President Bush' addresses to the
UN, and even invited to do the same in our colleges and churches. Most
Americans were irate at the gull of Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Evo
Morales to do such a thing, and on American soil, at that!
While
this was going on the San Francisco Chronicle continued to report,
extensively, on the "Burning
Man" which is held in the deserts of
Nevada
each year. A favorite topic for this
Left
Coast
newspaper, last year it devoted weeks to an entire series on
this annual pagan event’s 20 year anniversary.
The
Chronicle’s online site has lots of postings and pictures of
this year's "Burning
Man" pyrotechnic-fest where Wiccans and nudists,
transvestites and artists, pagans and, well you get the picture, meet for
a week of “glorious Hell on earth.” Burning Man's ‘10 Principles’
include, among other things: "radical inclusion, radical self-reliance
and radical self-expression," which they say in their mission statement,
"…can produce positive spiritual change in the world."
What
kind of ‘radical’ principles are they talking about? What kind of
‘spiritual’ change are they looking for? We can get a glimpse simply by
looking at a few clippings about this year’s event written up in the San
Francisco Chronicle.
One
article, "Cute
Fuzzy Little Children, On Fire" by Mark Morford, particularly
stuck out to me as clearly depicting the worldview of those who attend and
advocate for the "Burning Man," as well as the scary future
ahead for the children who are exposed to this event and the mindset of its
devotees, some of which are their parents. Morford writes:
"Of
course there are children at
Burning
Man.
..And I suppose you could very well think, by bringing your kid here early on,
you might earn yourself a super-cool teenager, one of those precious and rare,
alternative-minded artistic super-genius teens who doesn't think her dad is, by
definition, a total dork, ultimately resulting in a radiant spiritually luminous
carefully tattooed anarchist poet/astronomer adult who will cherish and admire
you, her super-hip clairvoyant Burning Man parent, forevermore and send you
loving postcards and thoughtful gifts and oh yes help save the human race in the
process. And you very well might.
Of
course, you always run the risk that she will rebel, will reject all parental
teachings no matter how raw and naked and funky, will recoil from all supposed
hipness and all this, you know, hot glittery ridiculousness, and do the typical
teenager thing and race in the exact opposite
direction from the silly wonderful Burning Man ethos and instead decide to
become, say, a virgin Mormon Republican taxidermist. But hey. Risk you run.
Of
course, everyone is childlike here. You could painlessly argue it's all one
giant, insanely impractical, wildly expensive, scrotum-shrivelingly hot
regression therapy session, albeit one with fabulous drugs and amazing art and
much fire and severe love/hate living conditions and incalculable numbers of the
aforementioned nipples, and huge percentage of those who come here are clearly
on some sort of mutated mission to recover something lost or rekindle something
stagnant, something having to do with childlike wonder and joy. Or maybe they
all just want to play with matches and run with scissors and scream into the
Void and have the entire community merely cheer them on and beg for more. Same
difference, really." (The rest
of the article is here.)
What
can I say? It speaks for itself.
It's
important to know, however, that this is no small gathering, as you can see from
the pictures.
And it is of no small consequence, for not only will "Burning Man"
have an impact on the children who attend and are raised by those who
attend, but it will have an impact eventually on our nation. For some of these
kids will grow up to be teachers and writers and film makers and politicians
and…again, I think you get the picture. And it’s a pretty scary one.
